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Here at INTI Center of Art and Design (ICAD), Subang Jaya, Malaysia there are multiple activities that run from time to time. Even the hiatus due to the pandemic did not deter the enthusiasm of the teaching team. Quite recently with the return to physical and studio practice, the Foundation in Design (CFDE) teaching team put together a design workshop titled Creative Archive and themed it to the famous art movement — Bauhaus. Though the Creative Archive had been run numerous times through the years, it did not attempt to involve all the students and so for the first time ever, they gathered all three semesters into one space to collaborate ideas and experiment with innovative creations.
Undertaking the Bauhaus Art Movement as its base, the students were first introduced to the gurus of that era namely Walter Gropius, Paul Klee, Wassily Kandinsky, and Josef Albers who initiated and broke away from the traditional characteristics of art and brought about a new form of art through minimalism and abstracticism with colour and geometry. They were tasked with assembling multiple possibilities using the basic square, triangle, and circle elements. Each of them was to be coloured in the primary colours of red, blue and yellow.
Moving forward the students were given the opportunity to tap into their innovative genes to create a 3-dimensional sculpture using found objects from around the campus building, workshop and their homes. Though they were tasked with creating an animal-themed sculpture, the students took every opportunity to showcase their storytelling skills by creating a background story for their creations. Some even took the chance to create continuity from their previous 2D task.
As the day came to an end, they were curious and driven with enthusiasm to the last day of the workshop. A fashion-based workshop to design key signature accessories for their Bauhaus-themed party. The aim of the workshop was to use the knowledge they had gathered from their previous two tasks and apply them to create a “sharp fashion sense” that is ready to party. Here is when they allowed themselves to go free and wild in expressing the Bauhaus characteristics.
The entire experience culminated in the party where students shared what they had learned with their enthusiastic educators. Even the teaching team decided to add more flair to the party by guiding the students into planning their exhibition space and providing some light refreshments for all to enjoy.
Till the next time from ICAD: INTI Center of Art and Design, Subang Jaya, Malaysia
Originally published on Medium.com
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One of the few things I have been exploring since late 2021 was the magical world of NFT. Prior to that the white rabbit made me explore the world of crypto and needless to say, it was an interesting read and mind-boggling topic to venture. However, from Cryptos and Bitcoins, the world has evolved into a sea of art that I would classify as Dada-ism meets Pop Art of the virtual world. Pretty soon, it might be written in history as an art movement known as #NFT Art Movement.
Coming back to the topic at hand, I began my journey by listing down the various sites that housed NFTs and were the trending sites for Malaysians (and perhaps Southeast Asia). From there, I narrowed it further by reading and checking with some of the local artist to see where they were posting their pieces and how they were garnering the sales and such. This led me to narrowing my options to two sites to explore – Opensea.io and Mintable.app
Both were equally fun to explore with but pretty soon, I began to see that the actions seems to be livelier on Mintable and so began to grow my activity there with what I would refer to as Visual Mind Illustrations.
Kickstarting my random illustrations, I began to doodle away my thoughts on photos of my surroundings or places that gave me a lightbulb moment. Soon I found myself thinking of how could I animate this and that in my doodly-style at all these random places. Ideas were just flowing as and wherever I was.
Here is the widget
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Love will find you when you least expect it to. It will come unannounced and find you in an unusual moment on the strangest of days.–Avijeet Dass… And that was the story of the two souls who were united in the Sacrament of Marriage on July 16th, 2022. Angela (the bride) has been a dear and close childhood friend; and when she called me one evening to say she was finally getting married…. Guess what she said!!? She made me her graphic designer and handed me the honour of designing the logo for both she and Morgan and their invitation cards.
The journey began with a sketch and my concept behind this was related to how two souls had to take many turns and long roads to find and meet each other (which by the way led to their fateful meeting in Penang in 2018). It wasn’t until much later did they begin their journey in love and it was an interesting Klang+Penang Love Story~
Their simple love was reflected with the use of daisies and carnations – the sweet pink and white that is contrasted against an elegant marble. Yes, every flower was illustrated with pencil and watercoloured with the blushes of the bride. This was later imported as a digital image into Adobe Illustrator and exported into wedding invitations sealed with a sticker that prominently displayed their logo.
Now that the invites where being flown off by Hedwig and the owl crew, it was time to work on items for the actual day – booklet covers for the Church Wedding Mass; little favor boxes to contain the traditional fruit cake (a homebaked courtesy of a family friend) and a little surprise that I kept silent until the week before their wedding – a splash screen design.
All in all it was a joyful experience to cherish as I can proudly scream with a gleeful expression, “I designed my best friend’s wedding kit!!!”
Have a look at the instagram post below to view the splash screen.
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At some point life, we have a tendency to seek something new and this time I opened the door to leather working. Leatherworking requires quite an enormous amount of energy especially when leather tooling – a process of engraving or embossing on leather.
The first few tries where not at all easy.
Patience was essential and this was one trade wherein you can not rush through. So the first thing, that I had to master was PATIENCE!
But soon it became muscle memory and tooling was a breeze. The next step was to understand the types of leather; how to choose for the different nature of products and how to calculate the amount needed without wasting.
That brought me to learning how to “skive” – a very delicate method of thinning leather be it just the sides (for sewing) or in general. It was here that I nearly lost my sanity as I was skiving off more than I can chew. However, thankfully from my first few experimentations, I saved the scraps and that became the source of practice to harness the right amount of strength and (again…) Patience to thin the right areas properly.It was then I was a little more confident to explore and test the market with the smallest of projects – a staff ID holder. (You can find one for yourself in our products store)
And from there came the journey of creating a new brand name for this product – Solmiet! I will make another post soon to detail the logo designing journey. In the meantime, do follow @solmiet.creations for more leatherwork updates as there are more items to come. -
The term NFT has been floating around for quite a while and I have been pretty much trying to avoid this breakthrough. Perhaps it was more of fear more than anything else.
Many people have been encouraging me to explore the world of NFT… and so II have decided to try it out for the next year of 2022. And so I have decided to try it out on two different sites – Mintable which is a Singapore based NFT Market and OpenSea, that hails from the US.
And, after experimenting for awhile, I personally found Mintable to be more approachable. But now it will be about crossing my fingers to seeing if it captures the eye of any interest beings.
In addition to that, I needed to give myself a new name after being away from the world of Digital Drawing and Painting and so comes the name Fjorsvika – that carries a bit of ancient Latin and loosely translates to Fount of Colours,
Do check it out in your free time and drop me a comment or two
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First and foremost, this is a delayed post. but as the saying goes, nothing is ever too late unless you are dead. This goes back to December of 2020 when I launched my hand-printed plates. I had been thinking of means and ways of turning my watercolor illustrations into something that is more that paper and printing on tees and totes seemed overused.
After much looking around, reading here and there and the countless YouTube video watching, I had my lightbulb moment but it was indeed a painful process as I experimented – some of my illustrations tore as I was conducting the image transfer and some suffered a tremendous color loss as it went through a wash in the sink.
But the result… was beautiful as I used my Inktober 2018 illustrations that featured animals I saw in my residences or at work.
After much practice, came the first order and it was for a sweet couple. A sweet reminiscence of their engagement and oh what joy it was Christmas.
ravindranterrance:Thank you very much for making this a reality. Mel was such a joy to work with, so talented making random ideas into such beautiful one-off work of art!
In your free time, do check out and if it comes of an interest to you – tell me what you would like for me to illustrate and print onto my plates.
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Working in an art and design industry is way different from working in the art and design education industry. With this thought in mind, a group of lecturers got together to initiate a staff exhibition in 2018. The event was well received and with the encouragement of INTI College Subang, the faculty launched a second exhibition in 2019 under the title ‘Muse’.
Credits to Akmal Ariffin, ICAD Fashion Lecturer
Once again it was well received. In 2019, a larger array of displays were exhibited compared to the previous year, and with lecturers showcasing their diverse skills, techniques and inspirations that not only inspire their students but also garner the interest of Art Enthusiasts! The passion continued to grow in anticipation for 2020 as the ideas for themes, subjects for exhibition and suggestions for physical venues began to flow from the minds of these artistic lecturers.
However by the first quarter of 2020, the devastating condition of the Covid-19 outbreak on a global sphere began to force people into a state of isolation in order to flatten the curve. The campus has been vacated and the lecturers have had to migrate from a physical teaching atmosphere to a virtual teaching platform. Yet this untimely pandemic has not stopped this group of lecturers into an idle state, instead they have taken this pandemic as an inspiration for MUSE2.0 New(f)Norm: Adapting a new life experience through the lenses of art.
Credits to Mohd. Syahrin Nazri, ICAD LecturerAs learning never stops growing, neither does growing stop evolving and so, this year’s Muse Exhibition showcases an expression of the lecturers’ personal experiences during the Covid-19 pandemic. The art show features 28 ICAD staff members’ expression of experiences that reflects on one of ICAD’s Manifestos while responding to current issues and adapting to the new way of living in the realm of uncertainties. The mentioned manifesto was released earlier this year during the annual ICAD Design Days (IDD); a yearly celebration held by INTI Center of Art & Design (ICAD) in conjunction with ico-D’s World Design Day (WDD).That being said, Muse 2.0 New (f)Norm was officially and virtually launched on the 11th of November 2020 to provide her audience with a simulated 3D experience similar to one, a visitor would have in a physical art gallery.Come visit the Virtual Art Exhibition presented by the creatively talented and artistically inspired ICAD lecturers on Artsteps.Com
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Never would have anyone imagined living in an era tormented by a virus. Nevertheless, through it all, there has been it’s goods and bads as people have begun to adapt to a new way of living. If one were to take a moment and observe, we had somewhat started living in a fast-paced environment and with the virus – life has slowed down for a bit. Even for me, I didn’t realize that I was beginning to miss out on a whole chunk of life.
However, looking on the brighter side, something good had come out of it as I began to spend my April to July time focusing on harnessing my skills in the various explorations. In addition to that was the complete move from physical teaching to online teaching. I think it’s pretty safe to say, I may have spent more than I intended to in turning my home office into a makeshift recording studio.
That aside, I have picked up some neat techie tricks with the computer and turning my phone into a recording camera. There were tons of tribulations to cross but lots of knowledge and experience was earned in the process. One of which was creating a new method for students to get a new experience of virtual learning using blogs. Mind you that this was for hands-on teaching such like drawing and painting. Personally it was exhilarating to see students getting into the practice of writing their thoughts and their working process.
On a personal exploration, if you had been following my Instagram – I finally found the time to digitize my pieces and turn them into a collection. Here is a snippet view and with it being available on Shopee and Etsy for sale!
Moving onwards, taking full advantage of the extra time I know have – more exploration and experimentation was given to enhancing my other skills. In the case of batiking, I found the time to play with the dyes and fabrics – good and bad results as I found that I can’t really use salt on China Silk just as I would on Cotton or Rayon. As salt has the ability to soak in the water, it also has a tendency scar the fabric so lesson learned here.
Come the mid of September, we were near functioning back to the classic physical classroom setting with the touch of social distancing. It felt so good to be back into the studio setting with a live audience (in this case, students). In this set below, you would see me conducting a stencil silkscreen using vinyl sticker instead of the usual exposure technique.
Alas, in this short period of time, this is all that I can share. More to come!
#artoftheday #covid19lockdownteaching #newagelearning #newnormteaching #designdotmuses
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Whoever said you cannot teach art in the form of distance learning; really needs to cut themselves some slack and get inspired by some of the internet trending challenges.
Through the last couple of working-from-home weeks, there have been a least a dozen of ideas trending on my social media feed. However, the most popular of them all happens to be the Getty Museum Challenge, where people recreate a Masterpiece from the confinement of their homes. It each carries its own originality and humour. A lot of these trending recreation carries a subtle reference to the on-going pandemic faced by the world – Coronavirus, otherwise known as Covid-19.
Not missing a beat, the teaching team that I work with at INTI’s Center of Art and Design (ICAD) got together and brainstormed a similar effort for the Foundation in Design (CFDE) students that we teach. You see at ICAD, we run this semesterly project titled Creative Archive. It is through this project that we gather the CFDE students of all semesters into one room and get them to think-tank creative ideas inspired by the current issues or cultures from around the world.
In this round, the students were gathered and given three days to scour around their homes for household products to recreate an existing masterpiece while bearing the Covid-19 theme. However, they weren’t placed in a physical room but were gathered in a virtual classroom hosted using our Blackboard LMS. Students were briefed and then broken into smaller groups to discuss the sub-themes that can be addressed under the Covid-19 banner. Upon sharing these ideas, they were dispersed to their respective classes to further the realize this project. Come to day three, they were all brought back into the same virtual room to present their final outcome and share their art direction! And well, the outcomes? Each and every individual presented an amazing and creative expression. My personal favorite was the Girl with pizza! Well, it was not the original name but a good outcome of what she was trying to portray.For more, you can view them at online exhibit on Instagram.
#gettymuseumchallenge2020 #gettymuseumchallenge #gettychallenge #iicsicad #icadsubang #intifam
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